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University of Westminster Eprints http://eprints.wmin.ac.uk The road to military humanitarianism: how the human rights NGOs shaped a new humanitarian agenda David Chandler School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Languages Chandler, David C. The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGOs Shaped a New Humanitarian Agenda. Human Rights Quarterly 23:3 (2001). 678-700. © The John Hopkins University Press. Reproduced with permission of the John Hopkins University Press. The Eprints service at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden . Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of the University of Westminster Eprints (http://eprints.wmin.ac.uk ). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected]. David Chandler Forthcoming in Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3, August 2001 The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGO’s Shaped A New Humanitarian Agenda Introduction The transformation of humanitarianism from the margins to the centre of the international policy-agenda has been achieved through the redefinition of humanitarian policy and practice and its integration within the fast-growing agenda of human rights. The new international discourse of human rights activism no longer separates the spheres of strategic state and international aid from humanitarianism, but attempts to integrate the two under the rubric of ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ foreign policy. As the humanitarian NGOs have been integrated into policy-making forums, the policy- makers have increasingly claimed to be guided by humanitarian principles. The human rights NGOs, in conjunction with governments and international institutions, have established a rights-based ‘new humanitarian’ consensus, which has succeeded in redefining humanitarian policy. The universal principles, which defined the early humanitarian internationalists, are now widely criticised by their NGO successors as the language of universal humanitarianism has been reworked to pursue human rights ends. The ‘new humanitarians’ assert that their ambitious strategic ends inevitably clash with their earlier principles, which developed in an age when it was necessary to obtain the consent from states, in which they operated, and the opportunities for more long-term involvement were limited. Today, not only is this more interventionist approach seen as a legitimate response to humanitarian crises in non-Western states, it is increasingly understood to be non-political and ethically driven. This paper is concerned with the process through which the core ethics of humanitarianism have been transformed, focusing on the shift in the politics of humanitarian interventionism as advocated by non-governmental organisations during and after the Cold War. It considers the non-political approach of traditional humanitarian organisations and the development of more politicised human rights- based humanitarian NGOs, it further analyses some of the consequences of this change, the retreat from the principles of neutrality and universalism and the development of ‘military humanitarianism’. Humanitarian universalism The organisation that over the last century has most epitomised the values of humanitarian universalism has been the Red Cross. The Red Cross established that humanity, impartiality, neutrality and universality were the underlying principles of any humanitarian intervention. The principle of humanity was based on the desire to assist the wounded and suffering without discrimination, recognising a common humanity and that ‘our enemies are men’. The principle of impartiality derived from the desire to assist without discrimination except on the basis of needs, giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress. The principle of neutrality bound Red Cross workers from taking sides in conflict or engaging in political or social controversies. 1 David Chandler The principle of universality claimed that the ICRC approach was the same the world over on the basis that the humanitarian values were shared universally. These four principles were predicated on separating the humanitarian sphere from the political one.1 The avoidance of politics was essential to the definition of humanitarianism. Cornelio Sommaruga, President of the ICRC, in his speech to the UN General Assembly, in November 1992, made this clear: ‘Humanitarian endeavour and political action must go their separate ways if the neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian work are not to be jeopardised.2 Jean Pictet, one of the ICRC’s leading thinkers warned that ‘Red Cross institutions must beware of politics as they would of poison, for it threatens their very lives’.3 As Michael Ignatieff notes, humanitarianism was the core of the ICRC’s non-political outlook: ‘It made no distinction between good wars and bad, between just and unjust causes, or even between aggressors and innocents’.4 Amnesty International, founded in 1961 with the aim of working for the release of ‘prisoners of conscience’, similarly pursued a universal campaign for the rights of political prisoners, regardless of whether they were persecuted by US or Soviet backed regimes. The politics of the prisoners were irrelevant, what mattered was that they were held for their religious, political or other consciously held beliefs or by reason of their ethnic origin, gender, colour or language. As well as working for the release of political prisoners, Amnesty also campaigned against capital punishment and the use of torture or inhuman punishment in all cases, not just for political prisoners. Amnesty was not concerned with the politics or beliefs of the prisoners but with all prisoners receiving a minimum of universal standards of treatment. The United Nations also established institutions solely for the purpose of humanitarian aid, such as the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 1943-7, the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 1946 and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950. The mandates of these institutions were explicitly humanitarian, not political. Private charity organisations were also involved in famine relief, many having been founded in response to the First and Second World Wars. Save the Children Fund was established in the aftermath of the First World War. Oxfam was founded in 1942, initially as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, providing relief for the famine victims in German- occupied Greece. These relief aid charities, like the ICRC, saw themselves as filling the gaps of humanitarian need that temporarily, in the aftermath of war, could not be met through the political system. By the end of the 1940s the major relief charities established themselves in a more permanent role, not merely addressing wartime distress but international suffering in the developing world. During the Cold War, the work of relief charities achieved a high profile precisely because of their universalist approach and political neutrality. They played an important role in providing aid where the international geo-political divide meant leading Western states were not willing to assist those in need. The Biafra crisis in 1968 was one of the first examples of humanitarian aid NGOs mobilising in the face of British and international disapproval. In the 1970s NGO relief intervention was repeated in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, the West African Sahel and Cambodia after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge government. In all these cases the NGOs campaigned against the lack of official institutional intervention. While the major powers pursued 2 David Chandler the realpolitik of the Cold War, humanitarian NGOs showed up the gaps in humanitarian needs. The non-governmental nature of NGOs meant that they could operate despite political pressure, as Ben Whittaker notes, these cases demonstrated that Oxfam and other NGOs could ‘operate where huge governments and international bodies were stymied as politically hamstrung’.5 This position gave humanitarian NGOs a radical edge, putting the interests of people above the strategic concerns of the East/West divide and providing aid against the wishes of Western governments. Agencies such as Oxfam, Impact, Concern and Save the Children Fund became popularly identified with the pro-Third World cause, providing these previously staid organisations with a new more youthful and popular appeal. The high-point of NGO humanitarianism came with the Live Aid campaign to raise funds for the Ethiopian famine of 1984-5. The aid agencies, in collaboration with Bob Geldof’s Live Aid, were instrumental in defying the indifference of Western governments and launched a hugely popular relief campaign.6 Most importantly, relief aid was avowedly non-political, there were no strings attached. Relief NGOs did not seek to link aid to specific Western states or to dictate economic or social policy. Humanitarian relief was assumed to be given free of political conditions or association with foreign or defence policy, delivered purely on the basis of need. As Bruce Nicholls summarises: ‘the two principles of nondiscrimination

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